


Natural Causes

by Diminua



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-15
Updated: 2014-11-15
Packaged: 2018-02-25 10:24:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2618408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diminua/pseuds/Diminua
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From a meme request. Mrs Hudson dies of natural causes</p>
            </blockquote>





	Natural Causes

‘You’ve called an ambulance of course.’ Sherlock says the moment he sees her, sitting on Mrs Turner’s landing, her face ashen against the cream wallpaper. John has taken her wrist and is muttering soothingly. Mrs Turner hovers with tea. One of the young men who lives here – Sherlock has never bothered to remember their names – still has his mobile in his hand. He nods anyway. 

'They said they'd be as fast as they could.'

It shouldn’t take long. 5 minutes, maybe 7 in rush hour traffic, coming straight down the Marylebone road. 

‘I’m alright.’ Mrs Hudson insists. ‘Just let me get my breath back.’

John, who has a stethoscope pressed to her chest, looks furrowed, but he manages a quick smile for Mrs Turner when she says she gave the patient an aspirin.

‘That’s right isn’t it?’ She says worriedly.

‘Quite right Mrs Turner.’ 

Nobody says heart attack, Sherlock notes distractedly, but they all know that’s what it is. 

..

Mrs Hudson spends a week in the cardiac care unit and finds it very difficult to sleep, although the nurses are nice enough. Really she just wants to go home and have familiar things about her and not be made cross by doctors asking her if she can remember who the prime minister is every five minutes. It's her heart that went wrong, not her brain. 

Even home is a little strange though, Sherlock and John pop out of their door if the bell goes now, checking whether they have to come down and fetch a client up. 

‘You don’t want to be doing the stairs with your hip.’ John says cheerfully.

‘Don’t patronise her John, she’s not a child. She knows perfectly well it’s not her hip we’re worried about.’

‘Oh you two.’ Ms Hudson scolds ‘I’m fine.’ Which is nonsense because she’s not even able to get down to the shops. John brings in the few bits she can’t have delivered and picks up her prescription. 

‘It’s no trouble, we’ve a dispensing chemist at the clinic.’

She supposes she’ll have to do the Christmas shopping online as well. Such a nuisance. Nothing tastes quite right anyway now she’s on all these rotten pills and when Mrs Turner comes round to 221c for gossip and cake, Mrs Hudson can only force down a small slice.  
She’ll have to use Sherlock as a taste tester for the mince pies next time he comes in uninvited when he doesn’t have a case on. Keeping an eye on her, she knows. 

Sleep is still a struggle. She’s not scared exactly – it must be quite nice to pop off in your sleep without knowing. She says as much to Sherlock, who she knows will take it the right way. Not like Mrs Turner, who doesn’t like her to talk about death, and John, who takes the same line as the doctor at the hospital and won’t admit there’s little science can really do for her at her age. 

‘You need to build yourself up a bit.’ He suggests, picking up protein shakes and effervescent vitamins. She does try, sipping them slowly over an hour or so, but they’re not like a good cup of tea are they? Even John has to admit that. 

She’s given an emergency warning thing that she’s meant to wear around her neck, although she doesn’t – only when the boys are out really. It’s close by though, hanging up on the back of a kitchen chair (she lives in the kitchen these days, the armchairs are too hard to get out of) so she can call for help when the chest pains return. 

The arrival of the ambulance alerts Sherlock, which is fortunate because she’s too weak to get to her own front door. She can only hold onto his sleeve as they load her on the stretcher. 

‘We’ll see you at the hospital.’ John says, but Mrs Hudson is latched onto Sherlock with what little strength she has, and transparently does not want to let go. It’s easier for the ambulance crew to take him along than argue with her. 

They keep telling her to stay awake because now they’re on the move her eyes keep closing. Sherlock remembers Mrs Hudson saying she thought it might be nice to die in her sleep, but this isn’t like that, it looks quite uncomfortable, with the mask on and a drip being put in. The ecg doesn’t look good and they try and correct it with a defibrillator. Sherlock stares from a safe distance, wishing they wouldn’t. She’s too frail. 

Her face screws up, and although the anomaly corrects, he somehow knows it’s not enough. He thinks of her heart, battered from the first time, a little bit of it dead. Now there will be another area. 

Everything goes a bit blurry, and he wants to know why they don’t give her something for the pain at least, even though he rationally knows they have to keep trying to save her. 

‘Tired.’ She says when they take the mask off briefly in A&E, run her through some details so they can book her in. They’ll give her some pain relief now, that’s one good thing. 

It makes her woozy, but she knows she’s in the hospital and Sherlock is there. He’s got hold of her hand, although he’ll have to let go soon, one way or another, and she tries to stay nice and calm, hasn’t really got the energy to panic anyway.

The alarm they’ve wired her up to goes off noisily and they insist on Sherlock backing away so they can try the defibrillator again. 

‘No.’ Sherlock says, surprised by himself. He hadn’t meant to speak. Isn’t even sure who he’s talking to. He doesn’t think it’s the medical team. They ignore him anyway. 

The defibrillator isn’t so shocking to him, this time. She’s not there to be hurt by it. 

‘I’m sorry.’ The nurse who was taking Mrs Hudson’s details takes his arm and draws him away. 

‘Are they going to leave her alone now?’ She must be used to that sort of reaction because she just looks even more sorry for him. Tries to settle him into a hard plastic chair. He goes at first, too dazed to think about it. 

‘No, I’m serious. If I go for a cigarette where do I.. will she be in the morgue?’ 

‘Only you, Sherlock.’ John’s taxi must have been held up in the traffic that scurried out of the way of the ambulance. His voice is fond though, taking the sting from the words. He looks older, face settled into those dipping lines it does. ‘Go on.’ he says. ‘I’ll talk to them.’

‘Just don’t let them hurt her anymore.’

‘Sherlock, they were trying to save her life.’

‘Just don’t let them.’ Sherlock repeats. He can hear John apologising for him as he walks away, the nurse explaining that it’s alright, he’s obviously very upset.

The rain is lashing and Sherlock has to huddle with the other few smokers under the awning of a shop over the road from the hospital entrance. It’s a chain coffee place, closed at this time of day, and the lights are off.

They’re a little pool of silence and misery in the constant clamour of London as it runs. On and on, like a machine built of roads and buses and the Paddington station tannoy. High pitched laughter of a girl’s night out, and the clack of heels on pavement. Incessant and awful noise.

Bus after bus, sliding and stopping with the whine of brakes and heavy shudder of a large animal in the rain, painted warm and red but universally indifferent, as all machines are. The friendly amber eyes of black cabs are a similar lie, the steady beep of a heart monitor, the hiss of a kettle for tea with no-one to make it. Curious how he’s never been troubled by the indifference of machines before.

Tears well, fat and warm, and Sherlock hunches more deeply into his collar, pulls on his cigarette, a welcome lungful of death, burning into the empty space Mrs Hudson has left. 

John doesn’t say anything about his smoking, and the feeling of disconnect only increases on the cab ride home. London is not London. There is no sound of soap opera in the hall, no biscuits have been left on the kitchen table in the fragile hope he might consume them. No-one to care if he sets fire to the wallpaper that could only really ever have been chosen by one person. 

The fire has gone out in the grate and John sets about re-lighting it. 

Sherlock watches and wonders why he bothers.


End file.
